Platée, by Jean-Philippe Rameau
Salomé Haller: Thalie / La Folie
Cyril Auvity: Thespis / Mercure
Evgueniy Alexiev: Momus / Cithéron
Céline Scheen: L'Amour
Emiliano Gonzalez-Toro: Platée
François Lis: Jupiter
Judith van Wanroij: Junon
Christophe Gay: Satyre
Opéra National du Rhin
Les Talens Lyriques
Christophe Rousset (musical direction)
Mariame Clément (stage direction)
Recorded at the Opéra du Rhin in Strasbourg in 2010

Rameau's Platée was commissioned for the wedding of young royal children. Louis-Ferdinand was 10 when he was engaged to 13 year-old infanta Maria Teresa. His elder sister, aged 12, married the infant Philip of Spain. These weddings were meant to reconcile the two branches of the Bourbon family. In 1744, Louis XV fell ill in Metz. Led by his tutor, young Louis-Ferdinand, then 14, was declared apt to the throne. The following year, at the age of 15, Louis married his cousin Infanta Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain, second daughter of Philip V of Spain, in Versailles. The young couple braved the hostility of the new favorite, the Marquise de Pompadour. Maria Teresa died the following year, soon after giving birth to a daughter who survived only for two years. A widower at the age of 17, Louis-Ferdinand was deeply affected by the death of his wife.
Composed in 1745 for the wedding of the Crown Prince and the Infanta of Spain, Platée, when it was first performed at Versailles, caused quite a sensation. Not only was the libretto about an old nymph played by a man and a young bride of limited natural charms, but the opera was the first purely burlesque work of its kind. As opposed to Italian opera, the French tradition did not allow for the mixing of genres, however central it may have been to the Baroque style - in Tragédie Lyrique, the reference in musical theatre at the time, a smile was allowed, but nothing more. Platée deliberately aims for the burlesque. The piece is also a parody of traditional French opera. All the clichés and mannerisms of the genre are included, and the slightest distortion in their context underlines their comic quality. And as the most popular subject in opera is love and its turmoils, it is only fair that the parody should extend to this topic and that Platée should paint a grotesque and meaningless portrayal of the "sweet bond of love".
With his Comédie Lyrique, which he liked to call a "Ballet Bouffon", Rameau added a true gem of exuberant jubilation to the operatic repertoire. After his successes in the "Noble" genre (Hippolyte et Aricie, Castor et Pollux), he set to music a wry and disturbing satire, mixing diverse genres with a virtuosity until then unknown on the operatic stage.

свернуть